This is one we love: Kingsman: The Secret Service, and the trailer is one of the best! With Colin Firth and Michael Caine leading the cast this film almost has to be fun. I think Kingsman looks like a great mix of the 1960s TV show, The Avengers, and 007 and I cannot wait. Release Date: Feb, 13, 2015.

Yep, Fifty Shades of Grey‘s a phenomenon, but not so much for the guys at the Movie Madness Podcast. Well, maybe Jeremy, but surely not for the Doug or the Maniac. But for those of you that happen to like the book here’s a look at the trailers! Release Date: Feb, 13, 2015

Verdict: 1 out of 5 stars

I heard from a friend who loves Jenny Slate (Saturday Night Live) that this movie was really fun and engaging… and that it’s streaming for free on Amazon Prime! Woohooo! Win – win! Rotten Tomatoes shows a 90% fresh rating!

I made it about forty minutes in before I started writing this and another ten before I turned it off. Afterwards, I had to watch a Southpark episode to keep from drinking a fifth of Jack, drunk-texting my ex’s all at once and crying myself to sleep.

Oddly enough, this is where they begin their romance. My wife finally got up and left the room while I was typing this up and I just hit the “Stop” button.

If you like Jenny Slate’s humor on SNL, this may be something you’ll enjoy. Maybe I’m just not getting it. But I felt this one lacked direction as if the director filmed without a script and just decided to go with whatever.

Verdict: * – – – –

First of all, there are some minor spoilers in this review. If you want to go into it completely unknowing of any plot devices, read no further!

I wanted to like this movie. Seriously, I did. The trailers looked awesome, and a couple of buddies said it was really good. So I figured it was a thinking man’s hitlist movie or something. Really good, to me, equaled great visuals and great plot!

Plus, if it wasn’t one of the signs in the back of the Bible already, it ought to be: Keanu Reeves showed some emotion! I know, I know. You don’t believe me, but in this movie he really does present a depth of emotion that astonished me. I mean, he smiled. He actually smiled! I didn’t even know he had teeth!

This movie started out pretty good. A gripping opening scene. Lots of metaphorical visuals and color. Meaningful balance of subject and placement. Everything you see in the first twenty minutes seems to mean something, so that when you see this movie twice, you are pretty sure you’ll see something different.

Then I saw Allstate’s Mayhem (Dean Winters) who played the unnecessary role of being the only American Accented member of the Russian mob and that’s where the movie sort of stopped asking me to think so hard. The movie started to follow a connect the dots pattern… and not just any connect the dots pattern; the one that looks like a snow man before you even start.

John Wick (Reeves), an emotionally vulnerable, retired ex-badass who just lost his wife (a small bit by Bridget Moynahan), gets his ass kicked old school by three Russian thugs who want his sweet ride for a quick chop shop yoink. And just to prove how ultimately small certain parts of their anatomy manly they are, they kill his puppy, given to him by his recently deceased wife.

Unfortunately, the kids work for the Russian mob… one is even the mob boss’s son… the same mob that contracted John Wick before he retired; the same mob who are now pissing their pants in fear because that weasel, loudmouthed, eff – up of a son robbed and puppy snuffed the wrong badass.

Now, me… being most certainly not a badass, I would have just called the humane society and filed a report. I’m pretty sure no one wants to yoink my Smartcar for a chop shop job. But Keanu’s a badass, so he has standards. Thus, he (probably) donated to the humane society, then went after the kid who killed his puppy with vindictive counterinsurgency that would make Navy Seals whimper.

Of course, the kids don’t care who John Wick is or that he used to be the baddest ass on the badass block. They wear shiny suits and are surrounded by bikini babes and have guns and shit. And despite all the older Russian mobsters warning them that they should be frightened, they continue to boast and brag and party their little parts of their anatomy butts off, come what may. This, of course, just makes us scream for their death sentences because weasel, loudmouthed, eff – up kids wearing shiny suits, surrounded by bikini babes need their heads rolled down a lane or two and John Wick is the man wearing the bowling shoes that’ll do it.

What I don’t like about movies like this is that it’s beyond my comprehension for a mob boss to protect his weasel, shiny suited, loudmouthed, bikini babe surrounded, gun toting eff – up of a son to the point where the boss’s entire unabbreviated empire and army of perfectly respectable mobsters is brought down, especially if he’s fully aware from the beginning John Wick can accomplish it. My first thought was,”Here! Take my weasel, loudmouthed, eff – up son for killing your puppy and leave us be!”

I know I’m in the minority on this, and I really wanted to like this movie. What I thought might be a thinking man’s hitlist movie turned out to be a rather unthinking action chain of events. And that’s cool, I like some flicks that ask you to check your thinking cap at the door… I enjoyed Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Pacific Rim, for goodness sake! But I just didn’t connect with John Wick. Keanu has some depth of emotion, I’ll give him that and want to see more of it. Unfortunately, all the other characters without exception are splashing around in the shallow end. The action was good, but man! The dialog seemed to be scrawled out on toilet paper in the bathroom of a 24/7 Shit n’ Git, and I just couldn’t connect.

Spills, Chills and Thrills…Action Packed Adventures and Massive Blockbusters-the Movie Madness crew tells you which movies we’re most anticipating. Of course we can’t wait for Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (it’s all about the colons), but I can guarantee some real surprises (think: weird yellow people). Doug, Jeremy and I join in a Battle Royale (dramatic exaggeration for effect) and come out fighting mad! This was so much fun for us and we know it will be for you…but if not, you can always call us at: # 260-573-0015, for voice mail, or email us at: moviemadnesspodcast@gmail.com. You can also post them to Twitter, Facebook or the Ultimate Movie Geeks community on Google+

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Monumentally stupid, ridiculously unfunny and devoid of any redeeming value, Mortdecai is quite possibly the worst comedy ever made. There may be worse, but I take a great joy in not having seen them. I have, however, seen Mortdecai and it is terrible.

Four of my favorite actors: Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor and Paul Bettany manage to take a horrible plot and story elements and, with great skill and dexterity, make them even worse. Not to be too harsh, but I think a good horse whipping is clearly in order.

I cannot express enough my extreme disappointment in Johny Depp. With a goofy accent, foppish eccentricities and a cowardly aspect he manages to destroy any hope of Mortdecai, his character, being engaging. He is as close to an opposite of Captain Jack Sparrow as possible. For an actor famous in his quirky roles Depp simply flopped.

Paltrow is Johanna Mortdecai, as always, beautiful, charming and clever, but even she does nothing to elevate this worst of all films. Her character is stuck in a one joke loop with Depp and her flirting with McGregor’s Police Inspector Martland is bland.

Paul Bettany is Jock, Mortdecai’s manservant and stuck in the same type of one joke loop as Paltrow: he gets shot, stabbed and run over in place of his boss over and over again to no point.  Unfortunately Jock plays the fool. The fool that gives his loyalty to Mortdecai, a cowardly, sniveling wretch who’s only positive characteristic is that he’s not too dishonest.

Perhaps this story works as a novel but it fails horribly as a movie. Far better to have been written as the Pink Panther hero: Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers)-heroic, but clumsy. Clouseau at least has some strong positive traits. There is no trait to Mortdecai that makes him worthy, either of Jock’s respect or Johanna’s love.

The cast and creators of this reprehensible piece of work should be turned over to Seth Rogen and James Franco for six months as punishment. The inane conversation and constant dope smoking could, at the least, do no harm. And their movie, The Interview, was watchable.

Please, I beg of you…be prepared before you see this movie. Perhaps get plastered or loaded before seeing this movie. At least have a  large bottle of stout wine by your side. This movie is so bad it deserves never to be seen sober or straight.

Rating: 0 stars out of 5

Verdict: * * * ½ – –

What happens when you cross a group of big, bad, bearded egotistical men running an international prostitution ring with arrogant smiles on their faces and bigger guns than body parts… with one man who has a good heart, a hidden history, lots of patience, love for good people and skills that rival some superheroes?

Pretty much what you think happens.

Ever since Glory, Denzel has been the grounding force in every movie he’s starred in, no matter what character he plays. Good guy, bad guy, guy down on his luck… when you see Denzel, you know everything’s going to be alright.

The Equalizer is no exception. And once again the talented direction of Antoine Fuqua takes what may appear to be a simple story and squeezes the most amazing detail from it from the opening scene to closing credits. Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is a simple man, patient with an undercurrent of fathomless sorrow, who takes OCD to the next level. One day, he witnesses a heinous assault happening to a Russian-owned prostitute he just met named Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz). Teri is at the end of her rope, daring to dream but knowing those dreams will never come true. Then she’s put in the hospital by her Russian pimp and Robert can no longer look the other way.

There are times when a bad thing happens and you can’t ignore it, and you get restless knowing what you have to do. What follows are sleepless nights making the decision to do the right thing or to look the other way. For some, looking the other way is the only way to survive. But for very few, there is no decision… there’s only response. Especially if they’re the only person who can do anything about it.

You are what you are and this world brings to you what you are meant to deal with, and so Robert wanders through his extraordinarily organized life working in a hardware store and straightens things up around him. This is what any mild mannered superhero does. And yet Robert doesn’t really know it, he’s just doing what he feels is right. So I would consider this a superhero movie. Lives are saved, renewed, helped along the way by someone who is able to help against extraordinary odds, yet remains hidden in the shadows as if he didn’t even exist.

The Equalizer is a superhero movie for regular folks, for those who live in inner city areas and are just trying to do the right thing. Once in a while, a superhero appears and helps out quietly, then lets you live your life the way you were meant to. Superheroes appear where you least expect them to, and save the world one person at a time.

Right now, I’m willing to bet you, yes you reading this post, are a superhero to someone. You may not know it yet, you’ve just been doing what you thought was right. That, my friend, is how we change the world! One person at a time.

Monumentally stupid and yet quite funny, The Interview stars Seth Rogen and James Franco. James Franco is Dave Skylark, the Jerry Springer-like star of a gotcha style tabloid show and Rogen is Aaron Rapaport, his producer/sidekick. Rapaport is fed up with the slimy, low class style of the show and is bent on leaving for hard hitting journalism. He is ripe for a change.

When Skylark discovers that North Korean President Kim Jong Un (Randall Park), is a big fan, he approaches Rapaport to propose interviewing the leader. When the communist dictator happily agrees, the CIA approaches them with a brilliant idea: lets have the idiots assassinate him. Since Skylark is a notorious lecher they send in a rather exposed CIA operative, Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan), to literally titillate him into complying. He succumbs and we have a movie.

Surprisingly, The Interview is quite funny and wonderfully reminiscent. Watching Interview is like finally seeing the sequel to Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd‘s Spies Like Us. I only wish they’d added a scene with the two Saturday Night Live superstars to add a cherry to the otherwise tasty idiocy.

The chemistry between the guys, Franco and Rogen, is classic and they’re like a marijuana hazed, and modern, version of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy: great friends, but we’re always waiting for “another fine mess.” There is definitely love between the two in this classic comic bromance and I love it.

With all of the silliness it’s surprising that the directors, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, worked so hard to make Kim Jong Un and Agent Lacey such good characters. Much of the credit goes to Randall Park and Lizzy Caplan of course. Park brought a wonderful crazed humanity to his role and when he switches from loveable to insane, it’s startling. He was endearing as the good guy and scary as the bad one.

Caplan too was quite good. She brought a weird charm to her role as a recruiter for assassination. She could have phoned this one in and gotten away with it, but instead made a little magic. She was strangely likeable even in the strangest roles. I’ve liked her since her quirky True Blood and New Girl characters and would love to see her bring a little of that oddness to romantic comedy.

The Interview is, by no means, a brilliant break out comedy, but it is fun to watch with some rather good characters working hard to make the film fun. Congratulations to Sony for following through and making this movie so easy to access. You can find this one everywhere on the internet, but checkout out The Interview Website.

Rating: 3 Stars out of 5 and no reason to see it at the theater.

Verdict: * 1/2 – – –

Okay, so… I’m as much a believer in the afterlife and near death experiences as the next spiritual person. My daughter is also, being a chip off the ol’ block and she has been begging me to rent this one for her for weeks. It being a PG-13, I figured it was not an issue, even when it heavily deals with the concept of death and what happens afterwards. Her mother and I passed on it, not really interested because we’re not really into young adult flicks, so she watched it on our laptop. But then we noticed after she watched it that she was really passive. If you know our daughter, you know that the word passive isn’t even in her thesaurus app, so this was a strange new experience for us. She didn’t eat much at dinner and for for the entire rest of the evening and next morning, she was completely bummed out.

So I figured I’d check this movie out myself the next day, to try and find out what about it that ruined her evening so maybe I could help bring her back from her depression. I hit play and was immediately hit with a normal family doing normal family things. Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz), the teenage daughter of the family and the movie’s lead actress begins the story with an ominous voice over that pretty much explained why I felt like setting something on fire by the time the end credits rolled. She said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.

Okay, that makes sense to me. Depressing, but that makes sense. She is a concert cellist who meets local rocker Adam (Jamie Blackley) and they totally dig on each other. The cello is her absolute passion. Rock and roll is his. They get together somehow, but their different lifestyles totally don’t click. Somehow, they keep forcing this romance on us when every teenager I have ever met would have called it quits after the first date. Every time they looked at each other, I reminisced about the time I was drawn and quartered, then dragged over broken glass by watching the romantic scene between Padme and Annakin in Star Wars: Ep 3.

The one saving grace about this flick was the characterization of Mia’s parents (cheerily played by Mireille Enos and Joshua Leonard). These two are a blast in every single scene they chewed up and spit out and I found myself laughing out loud in some places just from their dialogue alone! It’s really too bad there are so few scenes because <BAM!> she and her entire family are in a car wreck on a snowy road outside of town and Mia finds herself standing barefoot in the afterlife next to her broken body.

[Alert! Alert! Spoilers Ahead! AaOooooooGah! AaOooooooGah!]

If you would like to remain completely surprised, read no further! You’ve been warned! Don’t worry though, I won’t give away anything really important and you probably won’t care anyway once you watch it. Just sayin’.

This entire flick is basically Mia’s life flashing before her eyes. One hour and forty six minutes of near death experienceness. Her entire family is dead and there are some relative (literally) tear-jerkerishly, rip-your-guts-out moments in some places. But for the most part I got kind of bored with the flashback scenes that focused almost entirely on Mia spending about a year and a half during high school with Adam, accompanied by subtle acoustic soundtracks like Ben Howard’s Promise, and watching her parents just be normal (albeit out-of-place hilarious) parents.

If Mia had lived a crazier life, if she’d operated somewhat in-the-moment instead of planning everything… heck, if she’d even had a friggin’ sense of humor, it might have been more entertaining. But as it was, her completely normal, vanilla flavored teenage life was completely normal and vanilla flavored and I found myself drifting off about a third of the way through it. Especially because I’m the father of an admittedly crazier, never-plans-anything, totally-lives-in-the-moment daughter with an incredible sense of humor.

The fact is, Mia was actually getting annoying about halfway through it. Mia is (was) all about herself. Everyone tried to make her happy in life. Her parents tried to give her everything she wanted but she moped about life not being fair. Adam, despite his hard upbringing and the pain he has gone through, was the nicest guy and totally went out of his way to do things she wanted to do while trying to succeed with the band, but she moped about how different their lives were. When Adam got signed to a record label, she was miffed that he was at a celebration party and moped that he didn’t pay more attention to her. When she auditioned for Juilliard and totally knocked it out of the park, he told her they should celebrate and she moped, asking him why he never wrote a song about her.

Eesh. High maintenance much? I was actually hoping this romance of theirs would just end so we could get back to the point of the story. The more exciting parts of the movie are when her spirit is running around the hospital screaming about how much she wants her old mopey life back. And just when you think Yes! She’s finally going to let it go and just pass on and she’s about to walk down that tunnel of light… something pulls her back and here comes another relentless flashback. Gah!

By this time, I wanted to tear my own eyes out and pour lighter fluid over them. When the credits rolled I was literally gritting my teeth, rocking back and forth in a fetal position and I didn’t even hit Stop on the remote. I just ejected the DVD and snapped it angrily back into the case. 

Oh my God. I don’t say this too often, but this is literally an hour and forty six minutes I will never get back and when my own life flashes before my eyes after I pass on, I just hope I can fast forward through this part of it!

Just a side note… before I even get started… Jason Bateman has always looked like a kid to me. Always, even if he’s about five years older than I am. I love the kindness in his eyes, the innocent youth that is always there. I have always enjoyed this guy on screen and look forward to many more movies with him in it. I just needed to get that out of the way.

Oh! Another side note… A huge HighFiveDownLowTooSlow to Doug and the gang here at Movie Madness for allowing me to blather all over this site about movies and a giant thank you to you <yes, you!> for intensely examining casually reading somewhat scanning vaguely thumbing my reviews and editorials here! I love you more than you can possibly know. No seriously, look out your window. That’s me across the street in the van.

Okay, where was I? Oh yes, we were talking about a review here, weren’t we? Sorry. I love family get togethers. In real life and in the movies. Love them! I have literally fallen in love with movies that have this idea in mind. I love seeing siblings reluctantly fly in from all over the world, usually meeting up at their parents’ upper class New England home during Fall or Christmas, to be there for a particular reason they all must address. Usually it’s for the funeral of a family member, which is ironic but also gives the story a strong thread to keep it on track until the credits roll.

Strong memories of past laughter and pain mixing with different personalities and experiences, all the siblings’ spouses meeting each other (some for the first time), getting to know each other, hearing the stories, sharing the love and communing in fellowship with the interesting brothers and sisters who share the same name. It’s always fun for me to mix these ingredients up and see what comes out of the oven.

Movies like this can be hard to make. There have been some horrible movies made this way. The Family Stone was so far off the mark, that I figured this genre of stories was finally over and I lost all hope in family movies for Hollywood these days, but no. Along comes TIWILY and I’ve fallen in love all over again.

Judd Altman (Jason Bateman) loves his wife, Quinn. He just doesn’t really pay much attention, when suddenly he finds out she’s cheating on him. The look in his eyes broke my heart, ripped it all to pieces and threw it out a plate glass window into traffic. It hit so hard and so fast that I hardly had time to recover before his sister Wendy (Tina Fey) calls him in tears and tells him that, <Bam!> their dad is dead.

Something happened to me that hasn’t happened before: I found myself actually crying before the opening credits even splashed across the screen in a movie. Never happened before.

You read that right. This all happens before you even see what movie this is! This is not a spoiler alert because it doesn’t spoil anything. The movie hasn’t even started yet! Fortunately, it being Jason Bateman and Tina Fey, they somehow take these tragedies and twist them with laughs and, this time, something happens to me that hasn’t happened in a long time: I’m laughing while I’m crying!

Okay, now the opening credits roll. I wiped my eyes, still giggling.

The long and the short of it is that the family’s Dad had a final request before dying that all his children hold a seven day “Sit Shiva” <~ Gotta be careful saying that one! And so, all the brothers and sisters who really don’t have much in common and haven’t spoken in years get together and have to deal with each other, all while dealing with the complications that they have forged for themselves in life.

I won’t give anything else away, because after the first seven minutes (in which I had already determined this movie is being added to my DVD shelf) the movie really takes off. This is one of the most disfunctional families I have ever seen, and yet, they remind me of every family with multiple brothers and sisters that I’ve ever met. It’s amazing how down to earth this story is, and how well those who read the scripts bring it to life.

Love shows both its sides in this story, the darker side and the lighter side. The love of a family and the love of others around it supporting them and you feel it’s such a safe place to be because you know that this family is always there for each other, accepting each other’s limits and pushing each other’s boundaries as only brothers and sisters can. You see the best and worst in people throughout these seven days, you laugh, you cry and in the end you are completely smitten.

As family friend Penny (Rose Byrne) says to Judd when he talks about the complications in his life: “Cut yourself some slack. Anything can happen. Anything happens all the time.”

I very much agree.